Special Resources

Special Resources

How do they work?
You can create a list of Special Resources for your school, and then attach one or more of them to any activity.  They behave like a teacher but they aren't a (real) teacher.  They can be thought of as "dummy teachers" and their important property is that like real teachers, they cannot be double-booked / given two activities at the same time.

Why are they useful ?
Special Resources can be used for a variety of timetabling 'tricks', and enable you to describe timetabling requirements that would otherwise be hard to schedule.  See section C18 and section H in the manual for more details and examples.

- Example 1: a unique resource:
If you have a unique resource/asset (for example: a swimming pool, drama studio, minibus, etc) that is required by a number of activities, attach its special resource to each activity that requires it.  These activities will all then be scheduled at different times of the week / cycle, ensuring the resource is never 'double-booked'.
Two activities requiring the same unique resource will never be timetabled at the same time, no matter what features you use in TimeTabler.

- Example 2: limited resources:
If you have 2 or more of an item, you can represent them by a 'Pool' of special resources.   So if you have (say) 3 of an item, the Pool will ensure that lessons are scheduled in such a way that no more than 3 of the item are required at any given time.

See also:
Section C18 of the Manual, which introduces Special Resources.
Section H of the Manual, which contains examples of how you can use them.
'Special Locations' in this KnowledgeBase.